The Rhode Island wedding: The end...or rather, the beginning.

Allison puts a ring on Patrick at their May 29th wedding in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

I had never been to a destination wedding before my daughter's. Actually, I don't even consider this a destination wedding, because half the people involved already live in Rhode Island. There was talk of going to Ireland, which would have been great.

But since most of the out-of-town people were staying at the Hampton Inn, I could see how great it would be for everyone to fly to some great resort place to celebrate a wedding. Like a Scottish castle, for example. The way we sat in the lobby and could meet and greet other wedding guests was very cool.

The gown had a simple look,
yet exquisite beading and detail.

But I have a word of advice if you fly to a wedding: rent your own car. With a GPS system. My poor daughter was trying to save us some money after we spent roughly $2,500 getting to Rhode Island, and she insisting on giving us one of her cars to use.

She meant well, but getting people from the airport, to the rehearsal dinner, to the church, and then to the country club reception was the bane of her weekend. When I said I needed to ask her something while she was getting her makeup airbrushed on, she asked wearily if it had anything to do with transportation, and if so, she didn't want to hear about it. Poor lamb.

Sprint must have lousy coverage in that part of the country, because the GPS on my phone that normally I rely on couldn't connect to the satellite. The night of the rehearsal dinner, I was driving to the airport to pick up my mother, and made a fatal wrong turn in the first 5 minutes. I kept thinking I could fix it, and by the time I called my daughter, I was crying in frustration and cursing every road in Rhode Island.

We ended up screaming at each other, and she suggested that next time, I call as soon as I get lost. Sadly, there was a next time. And a time after that.

My poor mother had to wait almost an hour for me, sitting patiently curbside in one of Southwest's wheelchairs. I felt terrible, but not as bad as I did when I proceeded to get us both lost on the way to dinner with the bridal party girls.

We got lost going to restaurants, train stations, and stores. The only reason we didn't get lost sightseeing was that there was no time for it. The groom is inordinately fond of Newport, R.I.; in fact he proposed there, at the Tennis Hall of Fame. I don't care about tennis, but I did want to see author Edith Wharton's summer home, Land's End. All I know about Newport, I learned from "Age of Innocence." Patrick was upset that we came all that way and didn't see anything, but we'll just have to make a trip back.

The day of the wedding was a blur. My daughter had hired make-up artists and hair professionals, who invaded her hotel suite like a army bivouac. They set up director's chairs in front of the window "where the light is better," and a folding table which became littered with hairpins, hairspray, combs and brushes. It looked like backstage at a beauty pageant, which these ladies frequent.

The pros regaled us with funny stories about Mrs. Rhode Island contestants, while they ratted our hair, airbrushed on makeup, and kicked up clouds of Aqua-Net.

The organ and stained-glass window of the church.

The twin nieces of the groom were doing death-defying jumps from the top of the room divider to the bed, where Charlotte was using the king-sized mattress as a trampoline, just to add to the chaos of eight adult women getting ready in two small rooms.

In the middle of all this, the fire alarm went off in the hotel. We had ladies in the middle of being coiffed, and frankly, needed every second before the wedding. No one seemed to know what was going on, and the elevators wouldn't work, but we kept on. The klaxon was so loud, I could feel myself losing hearing.

We carried on until I heard and saw the fire truck, then I started moving everyone out of the suite. We were in the hall, getting ready to walk down five flights of stairs, when a hotel employee said it was just a drill, and we needn't evacuate. So I got to look like a jerk for panicking and giving in to the peer pressure of the herds of people I saw in the parking lot.

It seemed like the tumult went on forever, until suddenly, it was time to go. We piled into the limos and went to Our Lady of Mercy Parish Church, where the groom's family worship. It is a lovely church, founded in 1853, although like many lovely old ladies, it has had some work done.

Our party seemed dwarfed by the big room, but we huddled together in the front pews. Looking back to the door was lovely, and you could see the choir loft, with afternoon sunlight pouring through its stained-glass window, and the organ filling the room.

What can I say about how my daughter looked that day? All brides are beautiful, but Allison was stunning. The dress was elegant with clean simple lines, but exquisite beading and a row of buttons going all the way down into the train.

The groom was handsome, the children well-behaved, except Charlotte, who demanded in her two-year-old way to be near her mother at the altar, and had to be taken out by her dad, Chris. My older daughter Megan was the matron of honor, and I guess in Catholic weddings, they stay at the altar the whole time.

Allison, Megan and Charlotte.

The young priest told jokes, was engaging and the couple quickly went on their way with blessings, rings, and huge smiles.

We bombarded them with bubbles on the way to the limousines, and we moved on to the country club for the reception. The venue was beautiful, and they had a high minimum for the food service which translated for our small wedding into steak and lobster for dinner, and a cocktail hour with passed hor d'oeuvres and a buffet overloaded with shrimp and raw oysters.

Dancing at the reception.

Instead of a head table, the bride and groom had a table all to themselves, which made it nice for people to approach them, get individual pictures taken, and just wish them well. The table was in front of a picture window with a fabulous view of the water.

We all danced at one time or another, although the disc jockey didn't seem to have anything past 1979 in his repertoire. Megan asked me to keep Charlotte occupied for one dance because she had requested Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle." She knows I hate that guy, and said, "Don't judge me!"

Jim and I danced too, just not to Jim Croce.

We had to distract Charlotte while her parents danced because she hadn't seen her dad for the week Megan was at her sister's preparing for the wedding, and the tot was determined to monopolize his time. She demanded every dance, and even when she fell asleep in his arms, the sleepy toddler woke up and protested.

The evening wound down and we were faced with the transportation problem again. The hotel shuttle that the hotel advertised had only six seats and it was 40 minutes for it to make a round trip.

The ring-bearer Kaitlyn, flower girl Mia, and the ever-charming Lotte.

We called three cab companies, who refused to come get us because they had been burned before with people who called them, then hopped on a shuttle before the cab arrived. We begged, pleaded and offered credit card numbers in advance, but they were resolute. They were actually not very nice about it, with their "Cheers"-like accents. Welcome to R.I.—now go home.

In the midst of all this turmoil, my daughters' godfather Joaquin leaned up against the wall, took in the warm spring air and sighed, "Life is beautiful." I guess when you have escaped war-ravaged El Salvador, it puts the travails of getting from a beautiful country club to a nice warm bed after consuming expensive seafood, in its rightful perspective.

In the end, we were saving by Megan's in-laws, who had rented a van to drive down from Connecticut, and made another trip to come back and get us. It was really very nice of them. It's good to have family.

The new couple is at home on Long Island, where they face all the same obstacles everyone else does in today's society, only now they are facing them together.

The recessional.

The Rhode Island wedding: Part two.

Allison and Patrick's wedding, May 29, 2011 in East Greenwich, R.I.

We saw "Bridesmaids" last night, and while extreme, it did a good job of depicting what is most crazy-making about weddings. We throw together people of different colors, religions, socio-economic standings, political parties, value systems and world-views, and expect them to get along simply because they know people in love with one another.

Brides have a tendency to look to the past and honor childhood friends, acknowledge those who are newly important to them, and incorporate relatives when choosing a wedding party, which can be disastrous. At least it was in the film.

Zipping Ally's dress.

In my first wedding I chose bridesmaids who had been my friends since elementary school. I never see any of them now, and my closest friend growing up I didn't see once after the wedding. We had drifted apart after high school (as evidenced by my finding a Barbra Streisand cassette in her collection), but somehow it seemed important to have her there.

The lead character in "Bridesmaids" is feeling left out, and can't quite deal with her engaged buddy's new best friend: the super-rich wife of the groom's boss. She has to come to grips with the bride's new life, and has to learn that although nothing will be the same, the love between them is still there.

My homegrown bridesmaids.

That's what I had to learn, too. Roughly a month before my own October wedding, my daughter Allison announced that she would be moving to New York with Patrick, her oenologist fiance. Like, immediately. So she packed up, he headed out, and she and her cat Darby stayed with up for two weeks until our wedding, and she left for Long Island a few days after serving as one of my bridesmaids.

Grow your own bridesmaids and flower girls, that's my advice. That way you'll be sure to see them again....

I barely had time to wrap my head around her being 3,000 miles away, then she was here for a few glorious weeks, and then gone. And I was now married, a state that my daughters needed to get used to; I wasn't always available 24/7 like I had been before. 

Then came the announcement that the wedding would be in six months. In Rhode Island.

Pop-Pop making foghorn noises
to make Charlotte giggle.

This trip was the first time I had been to her apartment since she moved, and it was cool seeing in person what I had only seen while we Skyped (yes, it is a verb, lucky I don't have a copy editor, they'd be arguing with me). Then we were racing to tip of Long Island, past Gatsby country to catch the Cross Sound Ferry to New London, Conn. on onward to Rhode Island.

Allison has always been family-oriented, wanting to have family game night and just hang out together, so it was no surprise when she brought out the "Authors" deck on the ferry. We played this Go Fish-like game for hours when my kids were little, gathering "books" of Shakespeare, R.L. Stevenson, Poe, Longfellow, Sir Walter Scott, and Louisa May Alcott. Having her new love playing her childhood game — that must have thrilled my youngest.

A post-Authors card game on the ferry.

Perhaps I am too acculturated to the desert now, but I have to say: there are entirely too many trees back East. When one is used to seeing the horizon in every direction, having your sightline reduced to a 20 or 30 foot diameter because of trees and bushes felt a little claustrophobic. I now understand why film director Wim Wenders says that Germans are so taken with the American West — because they can see so far.

Rhode Island may not have the Black Forest, but it has many, many trees, and roads so idiosyncratic that  my husband and I were lost, together and separately, for five out of the seven trips we took by car. East Greenwich, the location of the church, was founded in 1677, and has those piled-stone walls you've seen in every Revolutionary War movie. You can practically see Redcoats marching by while ragged Americans crouch behind them.

The backyard of Ally and Patrick's apartment.
See what I mean? Too many trees..

I guess the town grew up around water sources, and then roads were built to connect everything, because following directions is impossible. Sprint coverage must be spotty in that location, because my GPS wasn't working, and often, when you were supposed to stay on a particular road, you actually had to make a left, because if you went straight, the road changed. Rhode Islanders must take Yankee thriftiness to extremes, because there were no road signs. You could find out the name of every alley-way off the highway, but not the main drag you were on.


We checked into our hotel, and the wedding weekend began. The bridesmaids, mother and grandmother of the bride, and the bride's father's fiance had a rather sedate, although scrumptious Italian dinner out, and I dropped some of the above off at a tavern for more raucous entertainment at what the Brits call "a hen party." On the way back to the motel, I got lost for the second time.

Charlotte had stayed with my husband, and she drove him crazy demanding to be taken first to "the hot pool" (spa), and then the "the cold pool." When my daughter picked her up, she had passed out in front of the television (a rare treat). Apparently she got annoyed because Pop-Pop couldn't rewind live television like her parents do her DVDs. A commercial would catch her fancy, and she became annoyed when her cries of "Again?" got her nowhere.

It was only the beginning of a very busy weekend for Charlotte....

A gratuitous shot of Charlotte and her mommy, Megan.